


You Carry It With You (a burden, a blessing)

by IamShadow21



Series: Children of Time [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Siblings, Community: omnijaxual, Epistolary, Family, Jack's Coral Is A Baby TARDIS, Missing Scene, Mpreg, Origins, Other, POV Jack Harkness, Pre-Boom Town, Pre-Game Station, Pre-Immortal Jack, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-20
Updated: 2009-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-16 18:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jack writes home, it's with his usual mixture of bravado and confession, exaggeration and honesty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Carry It With You (a burden, a blessing)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is addressed to an OC that isn't really an OC, and it's jossed by subsequent Moffat-era canon. Loosely linked to my fic Children of Time, but you don't have to read that one. Beta by [51stcenturyfox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/51stCenturyFox/pseuds/51stCenturyFox).

Darling sister of mine,

I know it's been forever since I've written, but bear with me a moment before you delete this gram with all the venom I know you're capable of. (Still beating the boys in hand-to-hand? That's my girl.) This isn't an excuse, rather, it's a story of the past little while in my personal timeline, something I want to share with you, whether you understand it or not. I know you've complained in the past that all my stories are nothing but sex and violence and a big dollop of bragging, and maybe that's true even of this one. But hear me out, that's all I'm asking.

You know that I've been travelling for a while, now, right? Time and space and all that jazz. No Agency to tie me down and tell me what to do. No swindling; I gave that up. I hooked up with a couple of people who showed me what an ass I was being. (No, not like that.) Started making an effort to be a better person. Let a bit of the old pain go, even though this guy I'm travelling with could take me to the very moment Gray was taken if I asked. I know I shouldn't ask, and that's enough to stop me, though it kills me a bit inside.

Anyway, this gram isn't about that, or about him, or even about the two I'm travelling with. This is about how I got pregnant.

DON'T DELETE THIS YET. Hear me out. Sit on those twitchy hands of yours if you have to. Yeah, this is where the sex comes into it. You're a big girl; you can handle hearing about your brother getting some action without being scarred for life. And it's not as sordid as most of the things I've mentioned before. It's not really sordid at all.

The short answer for how it happened is, I screwed up. (No, not like that. I've got all my implants, thanks.) 

I screwed up when we were planetside. Desert world, sapphire sea, nasty little war... you get the picture. There was this kid, young kid that looked just like Esan. I was jolted right back to being fifteen, dodging snipers and piloting hovers that crashed or blew up more often than they flew. This was a different planet, different colony, different war, but it was exactly the fucking same, sis. Don't ever go to war. Use that clever brain of yours and do something brilliant.

After all that went to shit, and we somehow got out of there alive, I hid for about a week. The ship we're on is pretty big, and she's sentient (imagine that, eh?), so she helped me keep away from the others, find my centre again. It wasn't easy, but she helped. Got inside my head, untangled some of the knots I'd twisted myself into. It was like I could breathe again. All I wanted to do was show her how grateful I was, how much what she'd done meant to me. I knew she wanted something. I didn't know what, but I would have given her just about anything right about then.

She led me to this room I'd never seen before, all pulsing blues and yellows, with this pool of liquid in the middle big enough to swim in. The sides were lined with these fronds, like those big anemones in the tidal pools, the ones that could paralyse you if you touched them. Well, I wasn't keen on drowning, but I trusted her.

Now, I know what you're thinking, and NO. I can see that screwed up face of yours from here. No bondage, no tentacles. Just a bit of a psychic interface. Okay, a lot of a psychic interface. Everything you've ever read about the hangover from those by the way? ALL TRUE. But worth it. Took me a few days to stop covering my ears when I saw bright colours, but residual synaethesia I could deal with. I did feel a bit like I'd been kicked in the balls, but it was an intense experience, and the ship didn't seem to mind that I'd come a time or ten in her pool, so, I let it go. 

Until a week later when I found the bump, that is. Up between my ribs, nestling above my diaphragm, a little bulge the size of a knuckle. My first thought was... well, you can guess. Nothing good. I wouldn't believe my wrist strap when it told me there were no malignant parasites or infections, so I ended up in the ship's medical suite, poking it with some scanner that I only half knew how to use.

That's when the guy whose ship it is crept up behind me without me hearing him and scared me to death.

"It's a seed," he said. "A polyp, actually. Baby coral."

The ship's insides are coral, did I mention that?

I expected him to shout at me or something, to be angry at me for molesting his ship. For messing up again. But he wasn't. He just sat me down and talked to me, explained to me what had happened and why. Like coral, the ship wanted to reproduce, and like some species of coral, there wasn't any point doing it without a partner. But most importantly, a partner who'd take her baby somewhere else. That's where I came into it. I was free to go anywhere, to take her baby out into the universe. To continue the species.

But then he told me that it wouldn't work without pure Vortex energy. They used to grow where it was readily available. That their planet's gone, now, and that this baby will never grow without it. I asked if that meant it was dead, and he said no; that it was just potential that would never eventuate. He also said I should feel flattered, that she was very choosy. I wasn't the first, but there had only been a few she'd chosen over the years. 

He asked if I wanted it removed, and when he reassured me that it wouldn't injure me to leave it, I said no. I think that was the right answer. Two days later he gave me a key to the ship, anyway. Never thought I'd get one of those. I didn't exactly make a positive first impression with him, and as this is me, you can probably guess how badly I messed up that time.

It's still there, barely visible, just under my heart, just above my stomach. I find myself rubbing it now and then, like the baby in there can feel it. It's hard to believe that it'll never grow up, never develop into the daughter of the beautiful ship I'm travelling in. I find myself imagining a way, imagining a future where she might have a chance to do that. Stupid, huh? Listen to me. Get myself knocked up, and suddenly I'm all clucky. Any idea about good names? I'm thinking Audrey. Classic and classy.

I don't know if this will even reach you, but I hope it does. Don't take any shit from anyone. Be sneaky and fight dirty; it'll keep you alive. 

Trace a glyph on the graves from me. You know the ones. You know I'd do it myself if I could.

Your wayward but loving brother.


End file.
